right place?

in my last week's class, one of the teachers told the students that they must practise right speech at the right place. if they do so at a wrong place, it will bring them bad karma. well, i could go along with that... but i find it hard to accept when the following was said...

oh, if you spread the dharma and tell them to people, you are practising right speech. you will get a lot of good merits. but make sure you do it at the right place or else, you will not be able to earn good merits. instead, you might get yourself a lot of negative karma. imagine this, when you go to the market, you see a lot of aunties chatting. what are they doing? gossiping right? that is not considered right speech. and when you see this thing happening, will you go up to them and tell them about the dharma? how? i think if you do so, you are quite stupid. you might end up with the aunties scolding you. in the first place, you should not talk about dharma at the market! if you do so, it is not considered right speech...

hmmm... my take on right speech is that it is not about the place of the speech or the actual speech itself, we must also consider the basis and the intentions behind it! and based on that, it is place-neutral! anyway...

life goes on.